Views in brief

Driven to suicide in jail

I WAS reading the letter "Medical neglect in jail." A friend of mine recently committed suicide in jail. My friend was a recovering alcoholic for seven years and unfortunately fell off the wagon. During the weekend that she fell off, she managed to get three DUIs. Because of those DUIs, she was thrown in jail and sentenced to one year.

My friend was taking anti-depressants for her condition. While in jail, she requested her medication and was denied. She made a total of 30 requests to the prison doctor, which were all denied.

Tragically, she took her life in jail. She left a letter stating how tired she was of feeling the way she was, and how no one was paying attention to her requests. My friend was full of life and love, and did not deserve to be neglected in that way.
Rose Trejo, Chicago

Coal and poverty in Kentucky

RONALD TESKA hits the nail squarely in showing the striking parallels between Iraq and Appalachia's coal region ( "From Iraq to Applachia"). The recent happiness/unhappiness survey showed West Virginia and Kentucky as the two "unhappiest" states" (the counties of highest coal production being the most unhappy). The poverty run of 100 years follows the coal industry. Anyone doubt the unhappiness factor in Iraq is pretty low as well?

So long as the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is run by industry insiders, the status quo will remain. OSM needs a new chief who will follow the law. Obama (from coal-state Illinois) sat on the proverbial fence throughout the election. The administration's new appointee to that post will be telling as to which side he's on.
Scott Goebel, Kentucky

Battlestar Gallactica's half-full ending

I HAVE to say that I disagree with Helen Scott's analysis of the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica ("There is no way out of here"). I read the ending as not a failure to imagine a better society, but a call to action made more potent by a familiar scene.

Like the complexity of the show, the ending of the series can be read as a glass half empty or half full. Every failure is a chance to learn from mistakes and to start anew.

It seems obvious to me that the major messages here are that the heroes of this story learned from their mistakes and did their best to create a better society--they failed, and since they are actually us, we failed, too. Now it's up to us to try to make the world a better place.

We may not be able to start over quite like our heroes did, but shifting the image to a society much like ours, rather than one that implies that they succeeded, brings the show into reality, and puts the crisis and the power to fix it into our hands.

I think if they'd shown an ideal society instead, the connection between the idea that we must do something now before things get much worse would be a lot weaker.
Iris Chamberlain, Seattle